I was interested in seeing how well the PDF Reflow feature in Word 2013 worked because Microsoft are essentially doing the same as we do for our products; extracting content from PDF, and outputting it in a different format. We have a Java PDF Library that can extract the content; and built on that, a Java PDF Viewer, conversion to PDF to HTML5, FX, FXML and more (SVG coming soon).

If anything, Microsoft should be able to do a better job than us as they are not limiting themselves to using Java. But it seems for now at least, that is not the case. Here are some side by side comparisons with what we output for our PDF to HTML5 Converter vs what Word 2013 output.

An example of the Reflow not working correctly on Newspaper Story style text. (Click to see full size)An example of a page getting incorrectly output as an image. As can be seen in the PDF and HTML5 version, the text should be selectable. (Click to see full size)An example where the top of the next page is appearing at the bottom of the previous page. (Click to see full size)An example where 2 pages are combining together to create a mess. (Click to see full size)Finally, Word 2013 crashing on me 🙁 (Click to see full size)

This post is part of our “SVG Article Index” in these articles, we aim to help you build knowledge and understand SVG.